Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Various technologies may be utilized to display information to a user of a computing system. Some systems for displaying information may utilize a screen, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen. The screen may be integrated into a portable device such as a mobile phone or audio playback device, that can be moved into a position at which the screen is viewable by a user.
Other systems for displaying information to a user may utilize head-mounted displays (HMDs). A HMD can be incorporated into a pair of goggles, glasses, a headband, a helmet, or other such device that the user can wear. A head-mounted display is typically positioned near the user's eyes and calibrated and/or aligned to the user's field of view to allow the user to view displayed information with little or no head movement.
In some cases, the display may also be transparent or translucent, allowing the user to view and interact with the surrounding real-world environment while wearing the head-mounted display. In other cases, the display may not be transparent, but may project a captured image of the environment on the display to simulate transparency or translucency. In still other cases, the display may be formed directly on a user's retina via a low-powered laser scanning technique. To generate display information such as images and text for display, a computer processing system may be used. Such HMDs have a variety of applications, such as information display/interaction, aviation information systems, vehicle navigation systems, social networking, and video games, among others.
In the case of information display/interaction applications, display information may include information regarding the surrounding environment of the user wearing the HMD. For example, the display may indicate personal information for a person the user is looking at, such as a name and birthday of the person, or interaction information for the person the user is looking at, such as social network activity or interpersonal correspondences. In another example, the display may indicate business information for a shop or restaurant the user is looking at through the display, such as types of merchandise available at the store, price ranges, and customer reviews. In a further example, the display may indicate media information for a song the user is hearing, such as a title of the song. In addition to providing information to the user wearing the HMD, the HMD may also be configured to capture information associated with the user and the user's environment as the user engages in real-world experiences. For example, the HMD may collect visual and audio information associated with the real-world experiences and store the information locally or remotely.
As more information becomes available and storage capacities continue to increase, an abundant amount of collected visual and audio information associated with a user's real-world experience may be stored. As such, efficient and intuitive methods for searching and navigating through the stored information may be desired to allow the user wearing the HMD to access the stored information with relative ease.